Wild Yeast

Notes from my kitchen, in which I bake bread and raise a few other matters

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Lemon Anise Snowflakes

As with the lemon that studs them, these loaves are one of those breads I thought would be one thing, but of its own accord (with maybe a little bit of gentle and experimental nudging from me) it turned out to be another thing. Sometimes it’s fun to just let things unfold and see where you end up.

The thing I thought it would be was gibassier, a French olive oil brioche traditional during the Advent season, scented with oranges and anise seed, shaped in flat round loaves. It is an amazingly good bread, and ranks among favorite sweet breads for nearly everyone I know who has tasted it.

But thanks to my generous crop of lemons just now, my bread asked for candied lemon peel rather than orange. Because I had lots of lemon syrup as a byproduct of the candying of the lemon peels — and also because I was out of orange blossom water — the bread wanted the syrup to stand in for both the sugar and the orange water in a traditional gibassier recipe. Because I love putting candied ginger in things, this bread begged to be loved that way too. And the shaping was just me playing around to see what showed up, and perhaps longing for the December snow(flakes) I used to know in Vermont but rarely see anymore.

The result turned out to be something slightly less sweet and less citrus-y than gibassier, and a fine way to enjoy a delicately-flavored sweet bread with your morning coffee or tea. The ginger is very subtle, and I might add more next time.

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Candied Lemon Peel

I have a lemon tree in my front yard. At least I now know that it is a lemon; when I moved in, the fruit was nothing more than tiny green nubbins, and because all citrus foliage and baby fruit are indistinguishable from all other citrus foliage and baby fruit, it was anybody’s guess what I had. As they grew, I first thought they were limes because they were green and lime-shaped (see the logic there?), but then they rounded out and I was sure they were oranges.

But damned if they didn’t turn out to be lemons (very round lemons, but most definitely lemons), and this is a good thing, because it is hard to have too many lemons. I suspect that when the tangerines on my other front-yard tree ripen in a week or two, I will be thinking I have way too many tangerines. Even though I love tangerines, you can only use so many. But lemons are one thing you can never have enough of.

This is especially true this month, when 1) we have all that holiday baking that calls for candied peels, 2) the stores are probably sold out of it by now, and 3) the stuff you buy in the store is swimming in way too much syrup anyway. It’s much better, and almost as easy, to make your own.

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Caramel Cheesecake

In my family, Thanksgiving is not the only important November celebration. My mom and my niece have birthdays one day apart, and this year the party called for cheesecake.

This is a creamy, melt-in-your-mouth kind of cake with a traditional graham cracker crust, adapted from the one we made at SFBI. The topping was inspired by this one at Epicurious.

I’m not a cheesecake expert, but here are a few tips I’ve learned that have helped mine be better:

  • To make a smooth batter, the cream cheese needs to be very soft. Leave it out to soften overnight, or put it in the microwave a few seconds at a time.
  • Keep the mixer on low-medium speed, to avoid incorporating too much air. Scrape the bowl and paddle frequently.
  • Avoid using a Springform pan, which can allow water to seep into the crust when you bake the cake in a water bath (even if you protect the bottom with foil). A deep, straight-sided cake pan works just fine.
  • Cool the cake completely at room temperature before refrigerating or freezing.
  • To cut cleanly, dip the knife in hot water and dry it with a towel before cutting each slice.

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My New Thanksgiving Cranberry Bread

This is the recipe I said I would not post. At least, it’s the recipe for the cranberry bread I’ll be serving for Thanksgiving this year.

Three years ago I wrote (and re-posted for the two years following that) about why I never changed Thanksgiving dinner, why it had been the same reliable cranberry bread for years (along with the same turkey, the same stuffing, and the same potatoes), and would be for years to come. It was the recipe from the back of the bag of Ocean Spray cranberries; you could get it there if you wanted it, and I wasn’t about to go messing with it.

So this year, I messed with it, a little. Added some whole wheat flour. Took away some sugar. Made the loaf a little bigger. Converted everything into grams because that just feels better to me. Call it fine tuning.

In the scheme of things, it’s not that big a deal. And by the scheme of things, I mean that for the past year — and for the first time ever in my life — my household has consisted of just me. Throw a new home, graduating from baking school, and becoming adept at toilet repairs into the scheme, and messing with a cranberry bread recipe is just not that big a deal.

It’s all good, because even really fine, reliable traditions can use a little fine tuning every once in a while, and even really fine lives can withstand some major turbulence.  Because even when the bread changes, the house changes, the life changes, and the plumbing breaks, I still have so much to be thankful for. (And if it makes anyone feel any better, I didn’t change the stuffing recipe at all.)

Have a beautiful Thanksgiving, everyone!

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Cornucopia

This month it was my turn to lead the Bread Baking Babes into battle, and  I wanted to do something to celebrate Thanksgiving, the holiday that many Americans consider our most important. I’ve also been wanting to experiment with dough sculpture, so I asked the Babes to make a cornucopia, a symbol of bountiful harvest and giving thanks, from slightly-yeasted decorative dough.

The light and dark dough recipes are adapted from Jeffrey Hamelman’s excellent book, Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes. Hamelman also gives instructions for creating a woven version of the cornucopia, but I opted for a simpler rope-winding method. Some of the other Babes chose to weave, and the results are spectacular.

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Bread Crumb Sourdough

Using old bread to make new bread is certainly nothing new. The practice of adding an “old bread soaker” to dough has been used in Europe, especially Germany, for hundreds of years. In Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes, Jeffrey Hamelman writes, “The practice of soaking old bread and then adding it into a new batch not only makes economic sense, it also gives a rich depth of flavor to the new breads. Far from being expended, the old bread contains much that is still fermentable…”

This sourdough bread uses old bread in a slightly different way. Instead of soaking it, I wanted to find out what would happen if I turned some week-old Norwich Sourdough (crust and all) into fine bread crumbs and simply let the crumbs stand in for a portion of the flour in a new batch of dough.

I have to say I’m pretty pleased with the result. Not only is the flavor rich and toasty, and the crumb pleasantly speckled with brown flecks, but this must be one of the longest shelf-lives I’ve ever seen with any of my loaves. I’ve gone through about 2/3 of a one-kilogram loaf in a week, and I am still able to cut, chew, and enjoy it.

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